A letter to my congressman

Unfortunately, it appears that another attempt will be mounted over the next few days to push this thing through and I remain quite concerned that the special interests behind this measure will ultimately be successful.

I would have less of a problem with this entire situation if there was more truth and disclosure behind the plan that Mr. Paulson has for this money, but he can't be open with you and your fellow congressmen or he would lose all support.

The fact of the matter is that this crisis is not rooted in individual mortgages, sub-prime or otherwise. Nor is this problem the result of portfolios of mortgages that are more commonly known as mortgage-backed securities.

No, the cause are structured financial instruments such as CDOs and CLOs that have been derived from mortgage-backed securities. The impact of the toxic structuring of these derivatives is bad enough, but they have been magnified due to the unregulated CDSs that were supposedly used to hedge against default of these instruments. And worse, the indexed speculation on these instruments, the very same indexes that are used for this incredibly short-sighted fair market accounting provision.

The world is facing a $62T nightmare because of these unregulated CDSs and Mr. Paulson thinks he can safely fend that off with a mere $700b?

Who's kidding who here, Congressman...

The following articles should be required reading for the entire 535 member Congress. These are probably the most cogent, clearly explained treatments on the structured financial instruments that precipitated this situation.